For those of you who have had surgery, how long were you on the ventilator?

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Thanks to you all for your comments. I talked to the anesthesiologist today & voiced my concerns about various things including this issue. His assurances took care of any anxiety I had. I go in at 5:30 a.m. Monday & surgery will be around 7:30. So I should be up and jogging around five-ish. Haha! (Maybe in my dreams). The pulmonary specialist who conducted the pulmonary function tests & the nurse who tested me on the inspirator were astonished by my lung capacity & force. With the inspirator, I kept the little ball at the top for approx. 30 seconds. I hope this will help me with the surgery & recovery. Sure as heck shouldn't hurt!
 
Ray. Our best wishesh for a speedy recovery. I look forward to seeing your posts in the post-op session.

-Kumar
 
Both of my surgeries were in the morning and I remember waking up both times in the evening with the vent still in. But like others said I was in the twilight zone so it didn't really bother me. My most recent one the nurse would say "do you want the ventilator removed" and I would give her a thumbs up and then drift back off into never never land.

My understanding is they go a lot by your O2 saturation levels (among other signs) when determining when it is time to take you off of the vent. To me the vent was just "another" thing that was going to be removed from my body during my hospital stay...hopefully the first...lol.

No pain while it was in, no pain coming out. Like many said they woke up without it. I think a lot of that depends on the hospital, the surgeon, and the individual patient. All I can tell you is when looking at the whole scale of OHS it was just a blip on the radar.
 
I was very nervous about waking up with the tube in, and thought I might try to pull it out on my own due to a claustrophobic type of feeling. As it turned out, I woke and was left on the tube about another hour, as my blood gasses were not right yet. I remember trying to time my breathing to go the same as the tube, but other than that it really wasn't any big deal. Hope everything is going well for you.
 
Ray Norsworthy said:
As it turned out, I woke up without the vent & a few minutes later joked about ordering pizza.
Click to expand...

Dang ... I'd say that pizza sounds good!


Glad you woke up without the vent. My 3rd open heart surgery (January 2003) I woke up WITH the tube STILL IN. I had to pass a test to prove that I could breathe on my own ... and, at one point, I thought to myself, "Gosh darn it ... I made it through the surgery with flying colors, but now I'm going to be killed by my own mucus".... At the time, I had ssssooo much mucus in my nose/throat that it was VERY hard to breathe......

*shudders*



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My husband was on it for days after his surgery to administer nitric oxide. He had to pass the test to come off of it when it was finally time, so they had to wake him up. He wanted it out, but he didn't seem panicked at all.

He was really nervous about the ventilator before the surgery. They kept him sedated while on it. I was nervous about how terrible it must be...then I walked by a room with a woman on a ventilator with her eyes open calmly just watching TV. I asked the nurse about her - she said yeah, some people have to live with it and just get used to it.
 
I remember a choking feeling. I had the tube and some form of internal echocardiogram tube. It was not painful it was just a sense of hurry up and get it out already. They took it out when I was half asleep/half awake.
 
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